Mental Models, Observable Behavior, and Disability

The oddly titled article Asperger's in Autistic Spectrum: Why Love May Not Be Enough appeared last week in the wake of a bunch of equally odd articles proclaiming: WOW! Asperger's exists in adults, like woah! (This is news, how?) Er, anyway, I say oddly titled because to me the article seemed less about love and more about the things people assume--and how new understanding can adjust those assumptions to align better with reality.

I am an enormous systems geek, and adore The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. One of the ideas examined in that book is the concept of "mental models"--the simplified internal representations and explanations of the world that people carry in their heads. Mental models are filters or assumptions that are used to speed up decision making. Senge spends a chapter on the dangers of unchecked assumptions, and discussing tools to help people to to gain better awareness and control of their assumptions. In that section, p. 192 - 193,

Imagine that Laura is a superior or colleague who has some particular habits that others have noted. She rarely offers generous praise. She often stares off into space when people talk to her, and then asks, "What did you say?" She sometimes cuts people off when they speak. She never comes to office parties. And in performance reviews, she mutters two or three sentences and then dismisses the person. From these particular behaviors, Laura's colleagues have concluded that she "doesn't care much about people..."

What has happened to Laura is that her colleagues have made a "leap of abstraction." They have substituted a generalization, "not caring about people," for many specific behaviors. More importantly, they have begun to treat this generalization as fact. No one questions anymore whether or not Laura cares about people. It is a given...

Laura's colleagues, like most of us, are not disciplined in distinguishing what they observe directly from the generalizations they infer from their observations...Failing to distinguish direct observation from generalizations inferred from observations leads us never to think to test the generalization. So no one asked Laura whether or not she cares. If they had, they might have found out that, in her mind, she does care very much. They might also have learned that she has a hearing impediment that she hasn't told anyone about and, largely because of that, she is painfully shy in conversations.

Going back now to the little Digital Journal article,

The new information about diagnosis and treatment of individuals with Asperger's syndrome can be helpful to many people. It also explains why that cute guy doesn't respond to the good-looking gal who winks and flirts and why she just might have to take up economics or song-writing to get his attention.

I am really pleased to see this idea of checking the assumption of "that person doesn't like me" with the possible reality of "that person may be autistic." I would like to see this lesson also taken a little closer to Senge's Laura story though: assuming that because a person is labeled autistic they do not care about people is just as bad as assuming "Laura doesn't care about people" when in fact Laura is hard of hearing. Like what Laura's office mates observed, an autism diagnosis only describes a set of observable behaviors; it does not in any way describe the reason for those behaviors.

"I thought you didn't like me because you didn't respond when I said hello," someone told me once. "I realize now it was probably because you didn't recognize me or weren't able to speak."

Yes, indeed.